It's pretty much an unwritten rule that a sarcastic joke on the internet with sufficient exposure will get a response by someone who didn't get it. Using /s really kills the fun (and whole point) of using sarcasm so it's a trade off to accept these comments will happen.
I'm impartial to downvoting as to reply literally doesn't usually add to the conversation, which is generally the point of downvoting. Losing karma shouldn't hurt your feelings.
If we called everything that was first described on Usenet as "Usenet's Law" then everything would be Usenet's law, probably even a couple of things in physics.
Do you mean partial to? As in, you favor downvoting over commenting to point out their mistake? Don't mean to be nitpicky, just genuinely confused if that was a mistake or I'm misunderstanding.
Yeah but we are human. Most people's feeling probably are hurt when their [non-malicious] comments are downvoted. But besides that I mostly agree with what you wrote.
I'm confused. Do you mean that we're allowed to create posts on Hacker News that are not sarcastic? I thought there was a rule, with a powerful AI enforcing it, stating that all posts had to be sarcastic. (Warning, this post is sarcastic and not meant to be taken literally.)
I've grown so tired of sarcasm. Online and in real life people are often saying the exact opposite of what they mean. We have to pick up the sarcasam to truly understand.
The real issue with sarcasm is that it actually places the burden of subtleness on the speaker, whereas people will usually blame the listener for not understanding. If the tone and wording isn't just about perfect, then it's obviously easy to miss sarcasm, let alone the humorous intent. And that is sometimes very hard in writing, hence the "/s" which ruins the fun for everybody. Likewise if the listener isn't educated about the object of sarcasm, little can s/he get the irony of the statement... I think missed sarcasm has more to do with failed cultural fit than fault of anyone involved. Which is probably why it's much more common and accepted within social circles than in general discussion. HN clearly fits the former, though; sarcasm is just about yet another norm here!
> HN clearly fits the former, though; sarcasm is just about yet another norm here!
Agreed, this is why I didn't want to take a hard position on downvoting someone for missing the sarcasm. We're in a public forum which crosses cultural boundaries. I see the argument for both sides.
Although I lean more towards downvoting as the majority of people on HN will get the joke and it's an opportunity to learn for those unfamiliar with the mainstream culture.
I did kinda the same thing except I still keep my good ol' macbook air instead of a chromebook. Ubuntu on desktop and I can run stuff on it remotely and I got a lot more performance if I were to spend the money on a new macbook.
This isn't awareness though. This is like telling a specific set of people about all the houses near by that have their front door key under the mat. You only become aware of the issue when it is too late.
